


Do Android Girls Dream Android Dreams?

by PrincessFawna



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, Dreams, Gen, Muteness, Robots, Sleepwalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 07:48:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30085818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessFawna/pseuds/PrincessFawna
Summary: Jadebot was used to living through the eyes of a real girl.  She only ever woke to experience the girl's dreams, and to move in the real world in response. Whenever Jadebot slept, she would dream of nothing.  But, one day, the robot woke up, but there were no the visions of the dream world in her eyes.  What was going on?  Why was she awake?Written for the 'Robots of Homestuck' Zine.
Relationships: Jade Harley & Jadebot (Homestuck)
Kudos: 5





	Do Android Girls Dream Android Dreams?

A young girl stood in her bedroom, but she wasn’t quite the usual girl. Her skin was made of metal and her eyes were large unblinking red orbs. Each strand of her hair was metal as well—all painstakingly crafted to make her look as girl-like as possible. Her face was too symmetrical and too motionless to belong to a human—it was uncanny. She was anything _but_ a normal girl.

While she was different and strange—she was still, in some degree, a girl like any other. She was _based_ off of a normal girl, a girl who shared the same room as her. A girl who was currently asleep on a pile of colorful stuffed animals a few feet away. _This_ girl was a robot, built by a man long gone, a man who had loved the sleeping girl, but hardly knew how to act as a proper guardian.

A normal parental figure wouldn’t build a robot to deal with his little girl’s sleepwalking.

It was strange, and perhaps wrong, but this girl was thankful for it anyways, as without his hands, she wouldn’t exist at all. Even if she wasn’t a normal girl, and wasn’t exactly her own self at all, it was enough for her that she could still experience the world.

She was only awake when the other slept, moving in response to her dreams. She could see them too, a vague sense of glittering towers and bright sunlight, a world far from the lonely one she walked in. She recorded everything she saw, a function built into her by her ‘father’, but now there was no one to watch the recordings. They slowly piled in her databanks, gathering digital dust, corrupting, unused.

And, unlike the girl in the bed, even though the robot saw what she did, she wasn’t _experiencing_ any of those things. She wasn’t flying in a magical world, she wasn’t seeing visions in the clouds, and she wasn’t speaking with strange people—the robot didn’t even _have_ a _mouth_ to do so with.

And, when the girl awoke, she would immediately power down. It was built into her, she was only meant to record the dreams and to handle the sleepwalking tendencies of the girl. There was nothing else for her to accomplish, no reason for her to be ‘awake’ herself.

So she…ceased. Every day she would die, and every night she would wake up again. That was what she was built for. She figured that life was all that she would _ever_ know.

… _Figured_ , even though she shouldn’t be _figuring_ at all. She shouldn’t be able to think, shouldn’t be anything more than a vessel for a dreaming mind. But…she would look at that girl sometimes, out of the corners of her perceptors, and think of that girl as someone else, different from her.

The girl was the Other—or, maybe, the _robot_ was the Other. The girl was the Self. And she…the Other.

And, even though she probably should have resented such a connection, such a limitation on her own existence, she just…didn’t. It wasn’t the girl’s fault that she existed. The girl didn’t _know_ she was awake, that she _thought_. And, due to the confines of her programming, it was impossible for her to communicate her awareness.

She was silenced before the concept of speech could even be considered.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When she was powered down, she dreamed of nothing. Just a gentle black, total unawareness until she was powered up again, and by then she was always already in the girl’s dreams. The waking and dreaming world, both visible to her at once.

She had grown used to that, seeing-double, so it was strange to power on one day to only see the ceiling of the girl’s room. It was a high ceiling, brilliant-white, with the occasional dent in it from her head running into it when the girl was a bit careless in the dreams. It didn’t hurt either of _them_ , but it _did_ hurt her room.

The robot would blink if she could, to try to adjust her vision, to see the other world properly. But…no matter what settings she tried to mentally adjust, nothing was showing. And she wasn’t _moving_ either—how strange. The girl usually didn’t remain still this long.

Then, something entered her line-of-sight. Black hair, trailing over her chassis. Brilliant green eyes staring down at her face. A smile, teeth bright-white, “Hello! Are you awake?”

Awake…?

A hand with colorful thread tied around each finger waved in front of the robot’s face. “Helloooooo?”

She was…awake at the same time as the girl? The girl…woke her up?

The robot tested her fingers, and shock blossomed in her circuits as they _moved_ —of _her_ will! She had chosen to move, _herself_! And she—it—it _worked_!

“Oh!!! Was that your hand?” The girl hurriedly looked down, focusing on the robot’s fingers, tentatively touching them with her own. The robot felt nothing at the touch, not in the way the girl would, but the pressure registered in her sensors as _contact_. The girl was touching her.

Tentatively, the robot sat up.

The girl beamed, “Hi there, little robot! I’m Jade!” She held out her hand for a handshake, proudly declaring, “I finally figured out how to activate you without falling asleep! I wasn’t sure if I could, but I figured it out with some of Grandpa’s old books and the internet!”

Jade…activated her herself? Why? The robot wanted to ask, but she…had no mouth. She shook her head in confusion, lacking any other method to talk, staring down at Jade’s hand.

“Oh, you don’t want to? Okay…” Jade pouted, her hand falling.

The robot quickly reached out, taking the offered hand, shaking it awkwardly, squeezing gently, unsure of how much pressure the girl’s hands could take.

She sighed in relief, “Oh good, I was worried that you’d dislike me…um,” she paused, tilting her head, her wild hair shifting over her shoulders with the movement, “What _do_ I call you? …it feels weird to call you the exact same name as mine, when you’re yourself. You…” she frowned, “You _are_ yourself, right? Not just some sort of…like, microwave-style appliance?”

The robot nodded emphatically—even though she wasn’t quite sure where she ended and the girl began, not when she had never been awake other than in her dreams, and not when she had never moved of her own will aside from _now_. But she still felt that _yes_ , she was _herself._

Jade giggled, “Oh wow, yeah! You’re totally yourself, thinking just like me, got it! Hi! So…what to call you…how about…Jadebot? Close to mine, but including that you’re a super-cool robot!”

The robot— _Jadebot_ now—nodded. She wished she could speak, she would if she could. Jade didn’t seem to mind though, speaking enough for the both of them. She wondered though, why Jade had gone through all of this trouble for her.

Luckily, she didn’t have to wait long to hear that as well, as Jade spoke up again, “You never get to walk around when I’m awake, right? And when I’m asleep you just…copy my movements? That just…I was thinking about how limited that is, and how, if you’re not me, which you _aren’t,_ it just seems unfair. You haven’t gotten to make your _own_ choices. I mean, not like there’s many choices to be had on this island, but there _are_ some, and I _live_ my life and all. So…it’s your turn.”

Jadebot stared at her, surprised.

Jade laughed, a little self-consciously, rubbing the back of her head with her hand, ““I mean, I think I still need you to sort of, um…house my dream self? At this point my sleepwalking is…probably pretty dangerous! So…I can’t entirely divorce you from that function, so I still need you to recharge, okay? But, uh, aside from that, as long as you’re charged for the night, you can do whatever you want? Do you…know how long it takes for you to charge?”

Jadebot did some mental calculations—it wasn’t really something she had had to think about before. She held up five fingers.

“I’m assuming that’s five hours?”

Jadebot nodded.

“Well, that’s totally doable then! Just, uh, be careful about your charge too, you know how I just fall asleep all the time. I still want to help you do what you’d like to do, but…I still have to worry about running off my balcony or something. Um. No hard feelings, right?”

Jadebot shook her head. Not really. It was what she was built for, after all. The girl never had to see her as her own, and Jadebot would have been fine with that too. It was a bit _strange_ , actually, to be seen as an individual.

“Cool! You can go off and do whatever you want then! Explore as you will, the world is your— _hah_ —your _island_.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Exploring had been new and fascinating. Of course, Jadebot had seen most of the island before, but she had always done so while seeing both the real world and Prospit, so she had always been a bit distracted. To take in the sun, the plants, the ocean, all the while being in full control of herself and her motions—it made everything much more _free_.

But, knowing that she had days, weeks, _months_ ahead of her, where she would be able to look at every blade of grass—it made her pause. She would have the time, later. No need to rush at it, or grasp at it desperately. She trusted Jade and knew that this would all remain for her to see.

So, she headed back to the house. For all the time she had spent there, she hadn’t really gotten to _be_ there.

She wasn’t sure where Jade was, because even as she used the transportalizer to skip the stairs, the girl was nowhere to be seen. Jadebot wandered back into Jade’s room, sort of curious to poke around it at her own volition. Most of her memories were in this room, as this was always where she would wake up, and Jade would often spend a lot of time in here, even when dreaming. She would message her friends, using Jadebot’s functionality to still do things in the real world, while just sitting in her room on Prospit. Or, sometimes, Jade would try to sleep, which got pretty funny because then Jadebot would be forced to move on top of her, which wasn’t very comfortable—for either of them!

In a corner of the room sat Jade’s bases. There were two now, one that she played in her dreams, and the other that she had scrounged up from Jadebot’s creator’s things. It was some old movie relic or something.

Jadebot picked up the metallic base— _her_ base—and cautiously strummed a few bars. It sounded the same as it always did, but it felt different to be touching it now, when she could actually choose what to do and Jade wasn’t determining the placement of her fingers. It actually took her a few minutes to feel natural at it, for it to fit into her hands the same way it always did in the dreams.

Once she got a handle on it, she clicked a button on it to activate its more complex mode, and deployed her extra arms to hold and play properly. The keyboard was the best part, a totally different instrument to use with the rest.

Carefully, she started to play, _really_ play.

She actually got lost in it, in the rhythm and the notes, in focusing on where her many fingers were pressing. She didn’t notice Jade come in until the girl was right in front of her, staring with wide excited eyes.

“That’s one of my songs! Or— _oh_ —one of…ours?”

Jadebot would smile if she could. She tilted her head to the side, towards the other base.

“Join you? Oh, I’d love to! I’ve been trying to think of an alternate baseline!” Jade beamed, almost tripping over her feet as she rushed to pick up the base, clumsily shifting it in her hands until she was standing properly. Jadebot started to strum again, working up to the point in the song where the keyboard started too, and Jade slowly joined in too.

Their notes drifted together on the wind, melding experimentally. Jadebot was playing the part they both knew, while Jade was trying to come up with something new. It shifted and changed, a musical conversation, a play of them moving back and forth with each other.

Jade seemed to understand her, shifting cords with her, following the same beat. Perhaps Jadebot couldn’t speak, but she could _play_.

They spoke like that, two girls who were all-too-similar, communicating through their music.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for the[ 'Robots of Homestuck' Zine!](https://robotsofhszine.tumblr.com/post/645813885941743616/after-some-long-wait-with-troubled-maintenance) Everyone created lovely works for the zine, I highly suggest you take a look! This is one of two pieces I made for the zine, please see my profile for the other.
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> [My blog.](http://www.trafuris.tumblr.com)


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